With "class skils", do you mean Virtues?
I'm not sure I agree (if that's the case). Virtue of Justice does little to your survivability, unless you trait it, and in that case, you'll live longer if you do activate it (and it has a pretty low cooldown, compared to the other two). Virtue of Courage has a pretty long cooldown, but if you time it right, it's a pretty powerful activation. Virtue of Resolve generally isn't worth activating, as it is a general loss of survivability if you lose the HoT. It's the only one I really miss when it's on cooldown. I only really activate right before using Renewed Focus.

And I disagree with "not as tanky as advertised." You can't really get more tanky than a Guardian without becoming too good at surviving.

I am talking about the 6-10 skills. In spvp once they run out you are dead. Dungeon, similar, in fact one of your main means of avoiding damage, blinds, don't even work on the bosses.

I am talking about the 6-10 skills. In spvp once they run out you are dead. Dungeon, similar

You're probably not playing right or you're playing a glass build. Other than your auto-attack, abilities should only be used as needed or in proper circumstances. For example, if you know a mob is going to use some ability that you have to dodge or otherwise avoid (most have a rough timer), then don't use your abilities for a damage combo. Similarly, if no one is taking significant damage or there isn't a big attack incoming, it's not useful to use an ability with the protection boon. If you're only going to take a little damage or can run out of the AoE, don't use a dodge. I came from "that other game" where you often had to mash abilities as fast as possible as much as possible. GW2 is not like that, and it's a very hard habit to break. In GW2, you have to learn your opponents moves. Know what the ones that really hurt look like and how often they can be performed. If you just avoided an ability with a 10 or 20 second cooldown and that's their only burst, you don't need to burn your utility to stay alive. Once you calm down and can better read the flow of a battle, you'll do much better.

I do agree that the 90% fail rate of blind on champions and bosses sucks, though.

I am talking about the 6-10 skills. In spvp once they run out you are dead. Dungeon, similar, in fact one of your main means of avoiding damage, blinds, don't even work on the bosses.

As someone who plays a lot of sPvP, I can say that's just not true. What's your build?
Our utility skills are a big contributor to our survivability, but you should be able to survive without them for a meaningful amount of time.

As someone who plays a lot of sPvP, I can say that's just not true. What's your build?
Our utility skills are a big contributor to our survivability, but you should be able to survive without them for a meaningful amount of time.

Ok you are a bunker guardian and all your abilities have run their course. Total valor and honor. Rangers hit you for 4k hits repeatedly. I guess 5 seconds is a reasonable amount of time if you have ADHD.

I've tried Bunker Guardian using Shouts, using Consecrations, using a mix. Same story every time. After 30 seconds you run out and that is that.

Bunker guardian will eventually lose. The game is designed such that holding a point indefinitely isn't possible. You have to defeat the opponent to hold the point. This was stated by the developers in a Q&A somewhere.

But if you're dying that fast, you're doing something wrong. Bunker guardians usually have protection up almost permanently. Same with regeneration and usually stability. Are you using a weapon like shield with a ranged damage defense? Dodging their burst damage (and not just everything)? I'm not a bunker guardian and I can live for more than 5 seconds against a ranger.

I understand the need to fix the perma-retaliation of the skill, but to increase the cooldown on the skill so that our PvE damage goes way down?!? What were they thinking?

If the retaliation was that big of a problem, then change that aspect of the skill....don't nerf the whole skill because of it. Anet had their heads up their asses with this change.

With this change, they also just made the Zeal trait line even less appealing to spec into than what it already was before. The Zeal line is for greatswords, with all the minor traits affecting symbols. Now that the main symbol that was used in greatsword builds was nerfed, it makes the traits in the Zeal line even less effective.

I understand the need to fix the perma-retaliation of the skill, but to increase the cooldown on the skill so that our PvE damage goes way down?!? What were they thinking?

If the retaliation was that big of a problem, then change that aspect of the skill....don't nerf the whole skill because of it. Anet had their heads up their asses with this change.

With this change, they also just made the Zeal trait line even less appealing to spec into than what it already was before. The Zeal line is for greatswords, with all the minor traits affecting symbols. Now that the main symbol that was used in greatsword builds was nerfed, it makes the traits in the Zeal line even less effective.

I haven't played with the changes, but I can understand it's annoying.
I also understand they want to nerf Retaliation, but this doesn't seem the best way to go around it. I also find it weird that they didn't come across the power level of the boon during their QA-testing.

I haven't played with the changes, but I can understand it's annoying.
I also understand they want to nerf Retaliation, but this doesn't seem the best way to go around it. I also find it weird that they didn't come across the power level of the boon during their QA-testing.

Pretty much this. They went about the change completely wrong. Instead of nerfing the retal aspect of the skill, or just completely replacing it with a different boon, they instead leave retal as is and nerf the rest of the skill. What the hell were they thinking? If retal was the problem, then don't nerf our overall damage from the rest of the skill. I seriously think Anet wanted to nerf GS damage in general (why is beyond me...it was our only good, reliable source of dps), and are just using the retal as an excuse to do so.

---------- Post added 2012-10-08 at 08:05 PM ----------

A lot of the people saying that the GS nerf was fine need to really step back and look at the larger picture. The fact that GS guardians can now only have a symbol up half as much now greatly reduces the effectiveness in any and all builds that took symbols into consideration with the GS. So then, explain to me, why these builds now have to suffer from a nerf that was suppose to be aimed at retal and not GS in general? Anet has effectively cut the total number of viable builds for guardian down even further, especially for those of us that like to run GS. For a game that supposedly promotes diversity and individual play style, Anet is trying their damnedest to pigeon hole certain professions into a select few play styles. And they have yet to explain to us why they felt the need to nerf overall GS dps along with any associated builds in order to "fix" retal ( which they still didn't do....permanent retal is still possible through other abilities, so that argument is moot). It's just plain stupidity on Anet's part....unless of course they were wanting to try and sneak in a purposeful nerf on GS dps.....which also makes zero sense.

I reckon it equates to a 20% damage nerf... loss of retaliation, loss of burning damage, loss of GS damage due to person not being inflicted with burning.

It also seriously lowers our survivability. As our combo field to remove conditions is massively reduced.

Now our lowest cd on that weapon is 10 sec... 8 if traited... which is really boring. All I am doing now is autoattacking waiting for the Whirl skill to come back up. Boring boring boring.

I'd agree with all of that, really. There are / were ways to balance the weapon without adding clunky feel to it, and that simply wasn't done here... just like there are ways to balance the class itself w/o altering the fighting mechanic much.

What's done is done, time to simply adapt to the changes, change approach via a different weapon, or shelf the character in favor of something else. If anything, I suspect that further guardian nerfs are in store.

Symbol of Wrath doesn't cause burning. This change is only a big nerf to symbol builds with greatsword. In PvP, I'll argue it's a buff with the reduced leap recharge and due to the fact NOBODY will stay in your symbol for more than two seconds (plus it roots you in place).

I haven't played with the changes, but I can understand it's annoying.
I also understand they want to nerf Retaliation, but this doesn't seem the best way to go around it. I also find it weird that they didn't come across the power level of the boon during their QA-testing.

Retaliation in its current state wasn't seen until BWE3 or so. Before then, it was completely useless. They've been trying to slowly tweak it - for example after BWE3, they added the scaling with power and changed the Virtues adept trait from +50% to +25% Retaliation duration. I think they're approaching the conclusion that Retaliation is impossible to balance. In order for it to be useful, it has to have a few seconds of duration. However, that means it's easier to extend for longer periods. Then there's the issue of how a bunker guardian can keep it up constantly for decent damage. The power scaling was supposed to address that, but didn't. If I had to predict anything, they'll most likely remove the boon from a few abilities, notably Signet of Judgement and remove the 25% duration trait.

As far as Greatsword goes, I'm almost switched over to the new keybinds. I still use the wrong ones in a panic. I think making the symbol a longer cooldown is for the better since we could combo off it easily without thinking. Now there's more decision as to when to use it. The damage loss outside of retaliation isn't all that bad, since you can just auto-attack for the damage as well and come out to around the same number. Burning stacking is negligible. Every dungeon I've been in has had burning up on mobs almost all the time. And any direct damage loss can be easily compensated by cooldown or damage tweaks to the other abilities. The area that should raise the biggest concern is that a lot of the symbol-based traits, particularly the minor traits in Zeal, are far less useful, and many were barely useful to begin with.

---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 02:39 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Trungalung

Symbol of Wrath doesn't cause burning.

It doesn't directly, but the ticks can proc burning from passive Virtue of Justice.

You would have normally used VoJ active over passive anyway unless you're using hammer or sword while soloing. Even if you don't use the active, you'll only get one second of burn to get the benefit of Fiery Wrath.